Faith, hope and love

Short course in as theological virtues

theology
THEOSIS

Damien Casey
5th August 2019
Catechism of the Catholic Church

The Theological Virtues

1812 The human virtues are rooted in the theological virtues, which
adapt man's faculties for participation in the divine nature, #
for the theological virtues relate directly to God. They dispose Christians
to live in a relationship with the Holy Trinity. They have the One and
Triune God for their origin, motive, and object.

1813 The theological virtues are the foundation of Christian moral

activity; they animate it and give it its special character. They inform and
give life to all the moral virtues. They are infused by God into the souls
of the faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of
meriting eternal life. They are the pledge of the presence and action of
the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being. There are three
theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity.

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 Footnote
His divine power has bestowed on us everything
that makes for life and devotion, through the
knowledge of him who called us by his own glory
and power.

Through these, he has bestowed on us the

precious and very great promises, so that through
them you may come to share in the divine nature,
after escaping from the corruption that is in the
world because of evil desire.
1 Peter 1:3-4.
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Catechism of the Catholic Church

Faith
1814 Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe
in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to
us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief,
because he is truth itself. By faith "man freely commits
his entire self to God." For this reason the believer seeks
to know and do God's will. "The righteous shall live by
faith." Living faith "work(s) through charity."

1815 The gift of faith remains in one who has not sinned
against it. But "faith apart from works is dead": when it is
deprived of hope and love, faith does not fully unite the
believer to Christ and does not make him a living
member of his Body.

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 Truth is a Person
“Truth is not a thing we possess, but a person by whom we
must allow ourselves to be possessed. Moreover, the fullness of
truth received in Jesus Christ does not give individual Christians the
guarantee that they have grasped that truth fully. In the last analysis,
truth is not a thing we possess, but a person by whom we must
allow ourselves to be possessed. This is an unending process.
While keeping their identity intact, Christians must be prepared to
learn and to receive from and through others the positive values of
their traditions. Through dialogue, they may be moved to give up
ingrained prejudices, to revise preconceived ideas, and even
sometimes to allow that understanding of their faith to be purified.”

The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the Congregation for
the Evangelization of Peoples, in Dialogue and Proclamation (May 1991),
49,

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Catechism of the Catholic Church

Hope
1817 Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of
heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's
promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace
of the Holy Spirit. . . .
"The Holy Spirit . . . he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our
Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope
of eternal life."
1818 The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God
has placed in the heart of every man; it takes up the hopes that inspire
men's activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of
heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of
abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude.
Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the
happiness that flows from charity.

1820 Christian hope unfolds from the beginning of Jesus' preaching in

the proclamation of the beatitudes. the beatitudes raise our hope toward
heaven as the new Promised Land; they trace the path that leads through
the trials that await the disciples of Jesus.
Hope is expressed and nourished in prayer, especially in the Our
Father, the summary of everything that hope leads us to desire.
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 Edward Schillebeeckx
• “negative experiences of contrast” as fundamental pre-
religious experiences.
• “the principle of the interpretation of reality is not what
we take for granted, but the ‘stumbling block’ of a reality
which resists us”.
• It is “experiences of meaninglessness, of injustice and of
innocent suffering that have a revelatory significance par
excellence”.
• The good can never be positively defined
• THE PROPHETIC
• “The human inability to give in to the situation offers an PRINCIPLE as
illuminating perspective. It discloses an openness to
another situation which has the right to our affirmative
attention to the
‘yes’.” human
experience of
suffering

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Catechism of the Catholic Church

Charity
1822 Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all
things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of
God.
1823 Jesus makes charity the new commandment. By loving his own
"to the end," he makes manifest the Father's love which he receives. By
loving one another, the disciples imitate the love of Jesus which they
themselves receive. Whence Jesus says: "As the Father has loved me,
so have I loved you; abide in my love." and again: "This is my
commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."
1824 Fruit of the Spirit and fullness of the Law, charity keeps the
commandments of God and his Christ: "Abide in my love. If you keep
my commandments, you will abide in my love."
1825 and 1826 cite Paul, 1 Corinthians
1826 "If I . . . have not charity," says the Apostle, "I am nothing."
Whatever my privilege, service, or even virtue, "if I . . . have not charity,
I gain nothing." Charity is superior to all the virtues. It is the first of the
theological virtues: "So faith, hope, charity abide, these three. But the
greatest of these is charity."
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Catechism of the Catholic Church

Charity
1827 The practice of all the virtues is animated and inspired by charity,
which "binds everything together in perfect harmony", it is the form of
the virtues; it articulates and orders them among themselves; it is the
source and the goal of their Christian practice. Charity upholds and
purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural
perfection of divine love.
1828 The practice of the moral life animated by charity gives to the
Christian the spiritual freedom of the children of God. He no longer
stands before God as a slave, in servile fear, or as a mercenary looking
for wages, but as a son responding to the love of him who "first loved
us".
1829 The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy; charity demands
beneficence and fraternal correction; it is benevolence; it fosters
reciprocity and remains disinterested and generous; it is friendship and
communion:
Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works. There is the goal; that is
why we run: we run toward it, and once we reach it, in it we shall find
rest.
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 Faith and its formulation

relational at its heart

• Lex orandi lex credendi -

• formation of the NT canon involved reciprocal
recognition
• First great challenge/heresy: Gnosticism – salvation
through knowledge. (and denying the incarnation)
• But doctrine does matter, the doctrinal formulations
of the creeds were about safeguarding the central
intuition of Christian faith.

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 Dei Verbum:
The Teaching of Vatican II on Divine Revelation

• Revelation is the self-communication of God to

people in salvation history which reaches its fullness
in the person of Jesus Christ
• The new knowledge which results in doctrine is
consequent to God’s self communication in Christ
• Out of the abundance of divine love, God
communicates God’s self to people through Christ in
order to give a share in the divine nature (Salvation)
• Revelation is a personal invitation to enter into a new
life of fellowship with God.
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 Christological Controversies

“the Son of God became human so that

we might become God”
Athanasius, On The Incarnation, 54. 3.

“What has not been assumed has not

been healed”,
Gregory Nazianzen, Letter 101, to Cledonious.

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THE TRINITY
How to account for difference in unity?

According to Athanasius:
“all that is said of the Father is also to be said of
the Son except that the Son is the Son and not
the Father.”

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The distinction that makes the three is not one
of substance or nature, but relationship.

“Father”, writes Gregory Nazianzen, “is not the name of a

substance or an activity, but of relationship”
This entailed a major shift in thinking away from a focus on the
uniqueness and solitariness of God - towards the idea of Fatherhood
as a term of relation.
While the Father is the principle of unity, the unity of God was more
and more understood to reside in the mutual interdependence of three
persons in each other, in their relationality.

Shift from hierarchical to a relational understanding of God

To be a person is to be in relation.
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Marriage and Family as the Great
school of Divinisation

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 IRENAEUS of Lyon
130 – c. 202 AD

For the glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man
is the vision of God
Against Heresies, 4.34.7
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The Fall

“One of the things revealed by the

doctrine of original sin is that it is
our capacity to receive gratuitiously
that was damaged in the fall: not
our capacity to receive, because
we have to receive in order to exist,
but our capacity to receive
gratuitously, which is the only way
we can ever share in divine life,
because that life can never be
other than gratuitous.”
James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong

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If, however, anyone says, "What then?
Could not God have exhibited man as
perfect from the beginning?" let him
know that, inasmuch as God is indeed
always the same and unbegotten with
respect to himself, all things are possible
to him.
Now it was necessary that man should in
the first instance be created; and having
been created, should receive growth; and
having received growth, should be
strengthened; and having been
strengthened, should abound; and having
abounded, should recover; and having
recovered, should be glorified; and being
glorified, should see his Lord.
Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.38.3

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• God intended man to have all good, but in his,
God's time; and therefore all disobedience, all
sin, consists essentially in breaking out of time.
Hence the restoration of order by the Son of
God had to be the annulment of that
premature snatching at knowledge, the
beating down of the hand outstretched toward
eternity, the repentant return from a false,
swift transfer into eternity to a true, slow
confinement in time.'
• Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History
(San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius, 1994), 37.

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 Irenaeus on Recapitulation
“He commenced afresh the
long line of human beings,
and furnished us, in a brief,
comprehensive manner,
with salvation; so that what
we had lost in Adam—
namely, to be according to
the image and likeness of
God—that we might recover
in Christ Jesus.
AH 3.18.1
“He therefore passed
through every age,
becoming an infant for
infants, thus sanctifying
those who are of this age”
and so on until “at last he
came on to death itself”
• AH 2.12.4.

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Having recapitulated the whole of our sinful history on the cross and
transforming it by his sacrificial act of love, the resurrected Jesus
becomes the first man to obtain the perfect image and likeness of God,
for it is the risen humanity of Jesus that most fully manifests the Sons
divine likeness to the Father.

Through faith and baptism the Christian comes to partake of this risen life
through the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that molds and fashions us into
the image of Jesus, and in this way we take on the likeness of Father as
his children.
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"For as God is always the same, so
the human person in God will
always progress towards God. God
will never cease to benefit and
enrich the human person, and the
human person will never cease from
receiving benefit and enrichment
from God"

Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.11.2.

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• Salvation as process
– Gospel parables depict the kingdom of God in
terms of organic growth.
– “this life is not godliness but the process of
becoming godly, not health but getting well, not
being but becoming”. – Martin Luther
– Eucharist

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 Eucharist
The bread is Christ’s body, the cup is
Christ’s blood….If you, therefore are
Christ’s Body and members, it is your
own mystery that is placed on the Lord’s
table! It is your own mystery that you
are receiving! Be a member of Christ’s
body then, so that your Amen may ring
true! Be what you see; receive what you
are…. All who fail to keep the bond of
peace after entering this mystery receive
not the sacrament that benefits them,
but an indictment that condemns them.
Augustine Sermon 272
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 Divinisation in Paul
All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image from glory to
glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:18

I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in

you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. …
you who are all partners with me in grace.
Philippians 1:6-7

For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so
that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
2 Cor 5:17, 21

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 Self-emptying for our sake
“For you know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for
your sake he became poor although he was rich, so that by his
poverty you might become rich.”
2 Corinthians 8:9

“Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality
with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found
human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to
death, even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him ”
Philippians 2:5-9

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 Adoption as heirs
But when the fullness of time had come, God
sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the
law, to ransom those under the law, so that
we might receive adoption. As proof that you
are children, God sent the spirit of his Son
into our hearts, crying out, "Abba, Father!" So
you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a
child then also an heir, through God.
Galatians 4:4-7

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 Salvation as Divinisation
According to Irenaeus in the 2nd century:
“The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through his
transcendent love, become what we are, that he might
bring us to be even what He is Himself.”
Against the Heresies, V. Preface.

Athanasius in the 4th century:

“For the Son of God became human so that we might become
God.”
On The Incarnation, 54. 3.

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 Salvation as Divinisation
Augustine in the 5th century:
“In order to make gods of those who were merely human . . .
one who was God made himself human.”
Sermon 192.1.

Maximus the Confessor in the 7th Century:

“We lay hold of the divine to the same degree as that to which
the Logos of God, deliberately emptying himself of his own
sublime glory, became truly human.”
On the Lords Prayer (PG 90:877A)

Aquinas in the 13th century:

“The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in
his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man,
might make men gods.”
Opusculum, 57. 1-4.

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 Theosis in Luther
Just as the word of God became flesh, so it is certainly
also necessary that the flesh become word. For the word
becomes flesh precisely so that the flesh might become
word. In other words: God becomes man so that man
may become God. Thus power becomes powerless. The
Logos puts on our form and manner”.
Christmas Sermon of 1514

This life is not godliness but the process

of becoming godly, not health but
getting well, not being but becoming.
Table Talk

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 Even Calvin
“This is the wonderful exchange which, out of
His measureless benevolence, Jesus Christ has
made with us; that, becoming Son of man
with us, He has made us sons of God with
Him”

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion,

IV.xvii.2.

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 SIN
• amartia - = “missing the mark”/going astray.
– failure to achieve the purpose for which one is
created.
– In juridical terms: it is the transgression of a moral
code.
– existential terms: it is a failure to be one’s true
self.

• Question of ORIGINAL SIN

– Salvation is communal and relational

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 Communal Nature of Sin
• Why practice infant baptism.
– Augustine’s answer was “original sin.”
– Theodoret of Cyrus “baptism is more than the remission of
sin” but a “promise of greater and more perfect gifts”.
• Augustine’s answer was individualistic.
• Other answers suggest that our common guilt is more
a matter of the solidarity of all human beings. If sin is
a breakdown of relationship, it is never purely
individual.
• Cf. Ephesians 4:25, “We are members of one
another”.

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How are we saved?
• Faith in Christ
– Not a hypothesis
– Not adherence to propositions
– But a personal (not individualistic)
relationship.

• Not what is salvation but who is

salvation?
• “Thou hast formed us for Thyself,
and our hearts are restless till
they find rest in Thee?” – St
Augustine

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 God is our Salvation
• It is God who is our ultimate “end” (eschaton)
• To be saved is to be divinised, to participate in the
life of God.
• salvation is much more than an alteration in our
juridical status,
• it is more than imitating Christ in moral conduct.
• Salvation is nothing less than the all-embracing
transformation of our humanness.

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 Salvation is Communal

we are created in the image of God, this means the

image of the Holy Trinity
• which is not merely personal but interpersonal,
• not a unit but a union,
• shared love.

Because God is Trinity my salvation is bound up with the

salvation of my neighbour

Salvation is also ecclesial : there is no salvation outside

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Salvation is Cosmic

There is to be a “new earth” as well as a “new

heaven” (Rev. 21:1)
Our human salvation leads in this way to the
redemption of the whole created order,
which through us “will be set free from its
bondage to corruption and will enter into
the freedom of the glory of the children of
God”. (Rom. 8:21)
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All things are reconciled
in Christ

According to Maximus the

Confessor, the human person in
Christ is the priest of creation,
This priestly task is fulfilled in Christ
by whom and in whom “all
things hold together” (Col. 1:17)
Saved in Christ, we share in his
cosmic mediation.
In Jesus all things material and
spiritual are linked intimately.

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 Will all be saved?
Apokatastasis

God “desires everyone to be saved and to come

to the knowledge of the truth”.
1 Tim 2.4

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